ECM report

A new CMS Watch eport shows the growing importance of Enterprise Content Management in an increasingly mobile world. Blame the BlackBerry or the iPhone, but a generation of users are expecting all the data they are used to seeing on the desktop to be available on their mobile devices as well. This evolution in working style frames part of the 2009 ECM report from CMS Watch that highlights the move to mobile. If you want to understand the ECM market, then CMS Watch's 436 report is a very good place to start. Featuring 10-20 page reports on each of the major ECM vendors, it is designed to help readers save money on contracts, save time when shortlisting and choosing vendors, and prevent purchasing mistakes.

Today I'm proud to announce the release of the 2009 edition of The ECM Suites Report. Expanded out to over 400 pages, I believe this constitutes the most comprehensive ECM product evaluation report of its kind. In this edition we have added some new vendors, dropped some old, and revised all 30 product reviews. This churn reflects a vibrant and extremely healthy global ECM market. As we note in today's press release, there probably has never been a better time for buyers, with a wide range of strong products to chose from, especially in the mid market.

The solutions to help transportation companies address these business drivers are some of the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies, including document imaging, forms processing and workflow, as they enable them to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver information and documents related to business and organizational processes. Submitted by Fujitsu Computer Products of America

These past few weeks as I have been working on the ECM Suites Report I pondered what it actually is that makes an ECM tool truly "Enterprise" ready. It can of course mean many things -- from a suite of vaguely-connected products, to a departmental solution that can scale -- but what should it really mean? What, separates a product that can play across the whole enterprise from one that is better suited at a departmental level? If you are looking for an ECM Platform -- something that can be a layer in your Enterprise Architecture and served up as and where needed across your enterprise -- what kind of things are you looking for in a product? It used to be functionality (hence the evolution of ECM Suites), platforms that can theoretically do everything from Imaging, through Records Management, to Digital Asset Management and back. But on closer examination that is not a particularly good way of defining true Enterprise players

CMS vendor GlobalSCAPE has released version 4 of its PureCMS product. At least in theory this update is supposed to resolve some of the product's workflow and usability shortcomings we identify in The CMS Report. More interestingly, it is further prove of falling price-feature ratios. From a functional standpoint, at the very low end of the marketplace (in this case, $380/seat) you can get real versioning, some workflow, and decent authoring -- even if the templating is a bit funky. We'll wait to see GlobalSCAPE's latest version in real production environments before saying more...

To establish greater efficiencies and allow for collaborative data sharing, reporting, and tracking, many businesses are taking advantage of enterprise content management (ECM) systems as part of their infrastructures. So, how do you choose which products are right for yourcompany's needs, and how do you combine them into an easy-to use system?

Today Oracle announced the latest upgrade to its flagship database: 11g. The announcement brooks great interest within the ECM community because, as we detail in the ECM Suites Report, so many ECM tools (including all the leading players) utilize the Oracle database. Of particular interest is enhanced support for "LOBs" (Large Objects), such as documents, drawings, images, and so forth. Oracle says 11g can now provide: comparable performance to regular file servers for access to large files greater compression capabilities the ability to encrypt LOBs within the database environmentIt has long been the case that databases were ineffective at handling enterprise documents -- sometimes becoming grindingly slow -- but the performance gap has been closing over the past few years.

Clearview brings a new approach to Enterprise Content Management with advanced Document Imaging, Document Management and Computer Output to Laser Disk (COLD)/Report Management, functionality unlike any you have seen before.

This coming Wednesday at the big AIIM Expo in Boston we are hosting a session called "Fix your ECM problem." It's a bit of "serious" fun, and if you are planning to attend the conference please do join us. You'll get a chance to pose your biggest ECM problem to a panel of experts, including yours truly -- so you can find out if the author of The ECM Suites Report actually knows what he's talking about! Just as importantly it's a win-win situtation: if we can help you, then you leave a winner -- and the person who stumps us best walks off with an iPod. In addition to myself, you'll find luminaries Priscilla Emery and Erik Hartman on the hotspot. The session runs on Wednesday afternoon at 4:30pm, so bring your toughest question and join in the fun.

Enterprise search vendor FAST and ECM vendor Documentum have just announced an OEM deal to license the former's search engine with the core Documentum repository. Several points to make here. First, these deals often get consummated for business reasons rather than technology reasons. Nevertheless, as content repositories get larger, we see customers looking at search more critically, with a keen eye toward higher performance. And they want content management vendors to be able to bring more search options to the table. Like many content management vendors, Documentum had previously bundled a lite version of Verity. As Enterprise Search Report readers know, FAST doesn't have all of Verity's bells and whistles, but it does offer a good performance and scalability story...

Twice a year AIIM (the ECM industry association) surveys members attending its vendor solutions seminars across the USA. Last November the association found that Web content management remained salient, despite some analyst reports that the Web CMS space was declining. And again this year, AIIM's survey shows web content management topping members' "likely technology interests in the next 12-18 months." (Records management and imaging also remain enterprise priorities.) We believe this is reflected in the marketplace; some of the big CMS vendors may be struggling, but nearly all the others continue to do well, at least for now...Review AIIM's Survey Results (PDF)[Update: AIIM membership required to view...]

My colleague Alan Pelz-Sharpe proves that it's possible -- just barely -- to describe a major ECM vendor that markets hundreds of products, in just three screens of text. His review of Open Text in Intelligent Enterprise magazine doesn't have all the juicy bits that you'll find in our ECM Suites Report, but it gives you a good sense for that vendor is all about...

Today we released the ECM Suites Report 2008, evaluating 32 Enterprise Content Management vendors. ECM shoppers should be encouraged by the potential bargains they might find in 2008 ECM marketplace, but once implemented, they need to be careful that their ECM systems not become a virus within their enterprise. You can download a free chapter, which includes our review of Oracle's Universal Content Management suite. If you are a full subscriber, you should receive your copy shortly; if you're a previous report buyer, you'll receive an e-mail a bit later this week outlining discount eligibility.

It's every business owner's nightmare. Customers are canceling jobs in droves. Your company's financial report resembles the Demon Drop at your favorite amusement park. You are forced to terminate key employees and face the very real prospect of going out of business. Tom Bojarski, president of document management VAR EchoStone, Inc., lived through this nightmare. Used with permission from Business Solutions magazine